Lately, wireless communication technology has exhibited dramatic and rapid development. Such dramatic development of wireless communication technology has advanced user equipment functionality. Advanced user equipment, such as a smart phone, enables a user to perform many complicated daily tasks conveniently and efficiently. For example, through the advanced user equipment, a user can communicate with other parties, exchange messages with other parties, do web-surfing, navigate a route, listen to music, and/or watch video and movies through a streaming service. The advanced user equipment, however, disadvantageously increases an amount of data traffic and consumes a large amount of radio resources in a communication network. Since radios resources are limited in a communication network, there has been a demand for developing methods for effectively utilizing limited radio resources in a communication network.
In order to effectively utilize limited radio resources, a radio resource control (RRC) protocol has been introduced. In the RRC protocol, radio resources such as channels between the user equipment and a RNC are managed based on an amount of data traffic and a required power consumption level. For example, when the user equipment has data to transmit and receive, a RRC connection is established between the user equipment and the RNC in a connected mode and the RRC connection may be managed based on RRC states of the connected mode. For example, at least one of a dedicated channel, a shared channel, and a paging channel may be allocated to the user equipment according to RRC states. Such RRC states may be transitioned based on a given state transition condition. The given state transition condition may include a timer and a traffic amount threshold. For example, an amount of generated data traffic may be monitored until the timer expires and the RRC state transition may be initiated based on the comparison result. For example, when the generated data traffic amount is greater than the traffic amount threshold, an idle mode may transition to a Cell_dedicated channel (Cell_DCH) state and a dedicated channel may be allocated to user equipment. When the data traffic is not generated for the given timer in a Cell_DCH state, the Cell_DCH state may transition to a Cell_forward access channel (Cell_FACH) state and a shared channel or a paging channel may be allocated to the user equipment. When no data is present to be transmitted or received during the period until the given timer expires in the Cell_FACH state, the connected mode transitions to an idle mode and the allocated channel is released from use by the user equipment.
As described above, the same state transition conditions are applied to initiate RRC state transition although differing user equipment can generates traffic patterns significantly different from one another. For example, the same timer period and the same traffic amount threshold have been used to initiate the state transition in the RRC protocol. However, user equipment generates traffic patterns that can be significantly different according to user equipment type and/or a data subscription plan. For example, a smart phone may generate more data calls than a standard phone. The standard phone may generate more voice calls than the smart phone. Furthermore, user equipment with an unlimited data subscription plan may generate more data calls than user equipment with a limited data subscription plan. If the same timer period and the same traffic amount threshold are identically applied for the state transition regardless of traffic pattern, unnecessary state transitions might be made more frequently.